One in All and ALL in ONE.

Spring... Onions we can eat all year, being forced to grow out of season. Onions that when opened brings a tear, cut to the heart, for what reason? A coil of metal, inside a watch, How quickly time flies… tick tock! tick tock! Moments, taken to reflect on the past. Making memories, good and bad, that last, and last, and last. All around the flowers are growing... Budding with promise, and intrinsically KNOWing… The warmth of the Sun is changing their nature Like The Son who does the same with nuture... The coil of possibility inside us... tightening and relaxing depending on what An act of will causes, but patience. . . with pauses. . . Create a Holy Space for God to act, and bring about changes ... Changes that last ... completing the Circle Of life … His intention? To restore His image In His creature, His invention... To bring to fulfilment, His likeness... let in the healing from sickness, the sickness of sin SO... Lord Jesus, come in… Come in… Come IN …To our broken places, Especially our mind And bring us to life with You And ALL of MANKIND

Aspects of prayer

Turn off all stimuli, the noises of the world; And the hiss of mankind praying will be heard. Awareness begins to take place; Hear: Cars on the road. The beating of the wings of a bird… It’s song thrilling ears, to raise the heart, and lift eyes and focus them into the skies; Eyes that see … endless possibility. Feel the firmness of the ground Under feet that walk the path of life each day. Bathe: (in water) a body, and wash it’s sins away. Touch the softness of a newly unfurled leaf, A blade of grass, an acorn seed. Smell the season of summer begin. Taste the fresh herbs to season life’s offering. What is prayer? To be… aware of the moment and what is… And use all those discoveries. If acitivity; then act to the fullest. If stillness; then remain in the hush. If struggle; then employ the fight. If dying; then leave, with calm serenity, Knowing … All is satisfied, All is complete.

The Lenten Spring by Catrina for Bethany House Chickenley

SPRING! A season. and a reason For opening doors, to let the wind blow, where it will; bouncing and bringing The spring chorus, singing … A time to rejoice, and a time to let go. Giving and receiving. Arriving and leaving the meandering track we all have to walk. Someone to laugh with, cry with, tread the path with Be quiet with or revel In A Heart to Heart talk Life brings us seasons, changes to force. Like the stream, to the river, to the sea on its course. Caring and sharing, tears and pain But The Light of God shines through All And sunshine with rain… …Makes a R A I N B O W !... … Gods’ promise of a brighter tomorrow; He completes our journey of suffering and sorrow. His grace and mercy; His LOVE is the thing We experience most greatly in The Lenten Spring. Catrina for Bethany House Chickenley Copyright 2013

Healing is not recovery - it's more that that!

Recovery is not about finding what we had before but thought we had lost, but discovering that what gives me life today. A physical illnes can leave soemone DISabled, it is so with a mental and emotional illness too, but, what they both do, is bring us to a place of a changed life. What I now am is other-ABLED, able to do that which I could or would not do before - take another way. I have also learned that NOT ALL CHANGE IS BAD or negative. It's just the culture of selfishness that pampers to the self "What I want I can have, and money must be thrown at it until it is acheived!" Being with my friends has taught me to give myself what I need to heal and not take it from others. They have their own journey. We do it side by side, not in each others pockets! Thankyou to all who have been with me on the journey.

Opportunities for change come in many guises. Illness is one of them. Having no control is really living by faith, and that even has to be allowed to have it's own space and experience. Whatever 2013 holds, I will change for the better, and what has been will not hold me prisoner by manipulating my feelings by memory, but faced as a reality of an evolving life. Onwards and Upwards to the hope Christ has called me to.

From Father Stephen who summs up the life of being Orthodox in a nutshell...
The Orthodox “experience” if I can use such a phrase, is the confirmation in the heart of the truth we have received as we grow in grace and in purity of heart. But the truth of the faith must be confirmed in such a living manner or it simply becomes an historical item and the Church would be a collection of antiquarians and not the living temple of God. For my knowledge of God is also my life in God. Life, light, truth, knowledge - all of these have something of a synomymous character.

O Lord, Save Thy people and bless thine inheritance...

Rememeber me O Lord, in Thy Kingdom...

Can't see the wood for the trees!
Looking along the path which has led me to this day, I was prompted by a dear friend, Phyllis, and the gift of the writing book she gave at Christmas, to articulate some observations of The Path so far. So here is a small offering.

I heard a voice say “Today, if you hear Him, do not harden your hearts…”
Lord, Have Mercy…


Jesus says “I will build my church”

As we read the lives of the Orthodox Saints, The Holy Spirit and our prayer to Christ prepares us and we become sharers of something of their grace and experience of Christ and, as with all Christ’s does through His people, this experience helps us to find our path in, and to, Christ too.

It’s a homecoming!
To God, and to our “self”.

As I was once taught – “From glory to GLORY”!

The Church gives us Bishops, Priests and Deacons: Holy Monks and Nuns, Friends and Mothers-in-Christ, men and women who stand on The Path, and send up flares to help light our way back to God and to our true “self.”
They ask God what He wants to give them… then do just that and only that.

In the Liturgy The Church prays for the church,
and prayer is continually offered …
Priest: For our Archbishop (Name), our Bishop (Name), the honourable presbyters, the deaconate in Christ, all the clergy and the people, let us pray to the Lord.
People: Lord, have mercy.


Speaking with the Priest can help us only when we help ourselves to the help offered.
Applying the ointment, or taking/swallowing/ingesting the word of treatment offered by our Spiritual Father, is how we accept the grace of healing for our broken-ness…
given by The Father, through Christ, in The Holy Spirit, offered within His Church fulfilled in the Holy Mysteries.
“I will take the cup of Salvation, and call upon The Name of The Lord!”

If I have put on Christ, His way should not be alien to me.
Therefore should the same garment fit all?

Holy God; Holy Mighty; Holy Immortal… Have Mercy on us.